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Margaret Atwood "Life Before Man" / I
She's never said it of course, but he's sure she compares them, judges him unfavorably because he's still alive. Chickenshit, to be still alive. No balls. *** When the aborigines sighted Captain Cook's ships, they ignored them because they knew such things couldn't exist. It's the next best thing to being invisible. *** Men replaced dinosaurs, true, in her head as in geological time; but thinking about men has become too unrewarding. |
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Margaret Atwood "Life Before Man" / II
Most people do imitations; she herself has been doing imitations for years. If there is some reason for it she can imitate a wife, a mother, an employee, a dutiful relative. The secret is to discover what the others are trying to imitate and then support them in their belief that they've done it so well. Or the opposite: I can see through you. *** He threw away a promising career, everyone said it was promising though they didn't say what it promised. *** Mummy. A dried corpse in a gilded case. Mum, silent. Mama, short for mammary gland. |
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